In a surprise move from Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who had been quoted in support of the protests as saying "sometimes democracy can be messy", a force of around 500 law enforcement officers moved in on the group of roughly 200 protestors this morning. Which sounds about right to me. Nothing says even odds like an over 2-to-1 ratio of police to protestor, especially when the police are armed with riot gear, rubber bullets, and tear gas. I even found a few scattered reports of the police using sound cannons on the protesters, but as of right now it would appear those are unconfirmed, confused reports of helicopters in the area.

I'm curious to know what caused Mayor Quan's 180 on the topic. To go from supporting the spirit of the protests to signing off on a police action that included 12 departments marshaled against a group that could file into a single Olive Garden without the fire marshall quirking an eyebrow, well that simply is not a decision that comes without some force of external pressure.

Not only was the protest broken up in their original park, but any attempt to organize away from the scene in the wake of the raid was also disbursed, resulting in further arrests.

It's just a shame that the Oakland cops didn't hear about this story out of Albany, in which the New York Staties, in conjunction with Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings, refused to comply with an order from the governor to clear out a similar protest in New York's capital.

You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning ....

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave